Grub4DOS Boot Failure

[netfrog77]

Hi all,

For no apparent reason (no power failure, or new install, etc), the Grub4DOS menu no longer appears when booting my desktop. The boot process hangs with the following on screen:

Try (hd0,0): non-MS: skip
Try (hd0,1): NTFS5: No grldr
Try (hd0,2): NTFS5: No grldr
Try (hd0,3): Extended:
Try (hd0,4): non-MS: skip
Try (hd0,5): Extended:
Try (hd0,5): NTFS5: No grldr
Try (hd0,6): Extended:
Try (hd0,6): EXT2: No grldr
Try (hd0,7): Extended:
Try (hd0,7): EXT2: No grldr
Try (hd0,8): Extended:
Try (hd0,8): EXT2:

I can insert the Tahr Pup 64 6.0.5 CD in my DVD drive and it boots fine and finds the Tahr64 save file on the hard drive to complete normal booting with no problem.
Once Tahr64 is running everything appears normal for the hard disk drive.
All my partitions are there and accessible.

I have tried re-installing Grub4Dos, restoring the MBR from backup using dd, and then re-installing Grub4Dos again, but these steps have made no change to the situation.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks!

[netfrog77]

Not sure where the emoji's came from .... those were '8's.

[nic007]

Can you see grldr and the menu.lst files on the partition you have installed it to? Show us how your current menu.lst file looks.

[netfrog77]

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 220049 Sep 9 10:51 grldr
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 15121 Aug 27 2010 HIMEM.SYS
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2119 Jul 24 22:00 menu-2017-07-24-220030.lst
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2362 Aug 19 20:42 menu-2017-08-19-204214.lst
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2362 Sep 5 10:20 menu-2017-09-05-102036.lst
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1955 Sep 9 10:51 menu-advanced.lst
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1920 Sep 9 10:55 menu.lst

menu.lst:

# menu.lst produced by grub4dosconfig-v1.9.2
color white/blue black/cyan white/black cyan/black
#splashimage=/splash.xpm
timeout 10
default 0

# Frugal installed Puppy

title Puppy Tahr64 6.0.5 (sda10/Puppy_Tahr64-6.0.5)
uuid d7b00679-4ce0-48f2-8ae4-0ffaf633ce5d
kernel /Puppy_Tahr64-6.0.5/vmlinuz psubdir=Puppy_Tahr64-6.0.5 pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck
initrd /Puppy_Tahr64-6.0.5/initrd.gz

title Puppy Slacko64 6.3.0 (sda10/Puppy_Slacko64-6.3.0)
uuid d7b00679-4ce0-48f2-8ae4-0ffaf633ce5d
kernel /Puppy_Slacko64-6.3.0/vmlinuz psubdir=Puppy_Slacko64-6.3.0 pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck
initrd /Puppy_Slacko64-6.3.0/initrd.gz

title Puppy Precise 5.7.1 (sda10/Puppy_Precise-5.7.1)
uuid d7b00679-4ce0-48f2-8ae4-0ffaf633ce5d
kernel /Puppy_Precise-5.7.1/vmlinuz psubdir=Puppy_Precise-5.7.1 pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck
initrd /Puppy_Precise-5.7.1/initrd.gz


# Full installed Linux

title Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca - xfce (sda9)
uuid 6bc6ef68-8c81-4467-af71-e9a22ae6cab6
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda9 ro
initrd /initrd.img

title Deepin Linux 15.4.1 (sda12)
uuid 37cb151c-6ed0-4671-aded-0959cf282077
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda12 ro
initrd /initrd.img

title Linux Mint 18.2 Sonya - Cinnamon (sda13)
uuid a8592d41-8a03-4a1b-ae55-dc569c236ea6
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda13 ro
initrd /initrd.img

title Manjaro 17.0.2 Gnome (sda14)
uuid d9034995-b2bf-4724-a34d-2e16cdf5b5b8
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda14 ro
initrd /initrd.img

# Windows

# this entry searches Windows on the HDD and boot it up
title Windows\nBoot up Windows if installed
errorcheck off
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /bootmgr
chainloader /bootmgr
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /ntldr
chainloader /ntldr
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /io.sys
chainloader /io.sys
errorcheck on

# Advanced Menu
title Advanced menu
configfile /menu-advanced.lst
commandline

[jafadmin]

look at the disk with gparted and tell us which partition has the boot flag set.

It should be the same partition that has menu.lst and grldr.

[netfrog77]

/dev/sda1 where the MBR, grldr and menu.lst are located has a 'diag' flag which is there due to the original Windows install setup as it is a Windows Diagnostic partition. The 'boot' flag is on partition sda12, which would be the last install of a full Linux version.
However, this is the normal flag situation for my hard drive and does not appear to have changed. It has been this way for some time and I don't believe explains the current problem.

[rockedge]

I suspect hard drive failure is the problem. This began to happen to me on a system, I went crazy trying to find the problem...turned out sector/block corruption...physical damage to the HDD caused these symptoms.

The disk drive sort of worked which had me perplexed for a while. The HDD also was formatted NTFS and Windows 7 on it dual booting tahr 6.0.5 and upup 3.9.9.2 as choices.

[jd7654]

The boot process hangs with the following on screen:

Try (hd0,0): non-MS: skip
Try (hd0,1): NTFS5: No grldr
Try (hd0,2): NTFS5: No grldr
...

Seems like grub stage 1 doesn't recognize sda1 (hd0,0) anymore. What is filesystem of this diagnostic partition? vfat/fat32? or ntfs?
What does output of blkid command show?

Anyway, you see it searching all your partitions looking for grldr file. So you can just copy the grldr and menu*.lst files over to another drive it recognizes like sda2. I assume that is your Windows or recovery partition?

I agree, seems like something happened to your HD. Possibly corrupted. But if the partition type is no longer recognized, the partition table is a bad place for an error. Be prepared to copy stuff off and backup, and maybe have to repair or repartition.

[netfrog77]

Hi jd7654,

File sys on sda1 is fat16.
Thanks for the idea of copying grldr and menu.lst files to another partition.
May try that later.

For now I solved boot problem by re-installing Linux Mint 18 which I was trying until found would not recognize wireless card (still trying to solve that when time permits) and setting up the Grub2 boot loader. Added Puppy entries to Grub2 custom_40 configuration file and all booting/working just fine.

So far, no other apparent disk issues, but have most everything backed to usb drive, so will just need to re-install OS's on new disk and copy back data from usb if necessary in future.

Thanks to all for the assistance! Puppy forum members are AWSUM!